A PIL has been moved in the Delhi High Court seeking direction to the Centre to release the confiscated PPE kits, face masks and stisers at the Air Cargo Terminal in Indira Gandhi International Airport and distributed them to COVID-19 frontline warriors including health workers and police personnel.
The petitioner, Hemant Manj, knocked the doors of the High Court through advocate Mohit Kumar Hukumchand seeking direction to the Union of India through the Revenue Secretary, Department of Revenue and to DG of Foreign Trade in this matter.
The plea stated that during the prevailing COVID-19 conditions, India was not having adequate medical equipment like ventilators, N-95 masks, PPE kits, stisers and that is when the government had decided that none of the aforementioned products could be exported out of India, and all the industries and factories were requested to manufacture these products to make the country self-sufficient.
The plea cited several news articles that 1,000 PPE kits were seized at Delhi airport, which mentioned that the customs at Air Cargo Terminal intercepted shipments of over five lakh masks and around 1,000 PPE kits being illegally exported out of the country to the US, the UK, China and the UAE at that time.
The said articles also mentioned the facts that additional items seized were stisers and raw material (2,500 kilograms) for making more masks.
Subsequently, there were a lot of posts on social media and news articles and these are still continuing on the issue of inadequate and inferior quality of PPE kits supplies to all the health officials, especially in hospitals which were only catering to COVID-19 patients, the petition said.
It added that the medical equipment seized at the Air Cargo Terminal at Delhi airport can be of great assistance to all COVID-19 fighters and keeping such crucial and vital health-related equipment and materials seized-up and/or confiscated will not serve the interests of the society, in the backdrop of thousands of government officials working in these demanding times.
The petitioner stated that in the absence of any concrete policy on the seizures made of masks and PPE kits, the court should invoke its extraordinary jurisdiction to issue directions to the respondents for the purpose of timely and prompt allocation of such equipment.
( With inputs from ANI )